On the Nature of Empire
by Kore Anesidora
Summary: Warriors make for terrible soldiers, great generals, and truly appalling empresses. Another take on "When Fates Collide." Two-parter.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: Warriors make for terrible soldiers, great generals, and truly appalling empresses. Another take on "When Fates Collide." **

**I've been brewing up ideas for a Xena fanfic for ages now. Here is part 1.**

**Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: xwp is not mine.**

* * *

Warriors make for terrible soldiers but excellent generals. They could not properly take orders. They saw where battles hung and breathed, the precise moment when the fighting turned bruised and mottled. A warrior pushed where a soldier should wait, flourished where a soldier should despair. A warrior does not rout, nor buckle. To a warrior there is only exultation, to a general – triumph.

Xena made a peerless general, a dangerous general. She knew nothing of surrender, nor flight. War sang to her blood as a muse to poets – O War, rage and immortal glory I sing! Grant me the mettle to conquer, the muscle to cleave, the fury to endure!

A general, a warrior for the ages she may have been, but it was those same qualities that made Xena a truly appalling empress.

* * *

The day was still young when Gabrielle arrived in Rome. Behind her the imperial palace loomed upon the Palatine, but she faced away, hands clasped beneath her chin, eyes scanning the city sprawled beneath her. Eager to be away, she announced to Berenike that she was off to explore the city, to which her aging wet-nurse and perennially present personal attendant raised a cavalcade of disagreements, but Gabrielle would hear none of it. Instructing Berenike to oversee the transference of their luggage from the carriage to their rooms in the palace, she shrouded herself in her oiled traveling cloak and winged down the paved street.

And then, Gabrielle thought, what a day – crisp and slightly cool, spring a taste upon the air, a citrus burst all pomegranate and no seed. All week she'd been cooped up in either a carriage or a ship's cabin, bored in the former, sick in the latter, and unable to write a word in either for the rocking sway and briny spray, the lurch and heave.

But now she was plunged in the bustle of the world's fairest city and the sea was nowhere in sight. She peered, perched at the lip of a curb, neck craned – something birdlike about her not only in stance but in color, bright golds, downy soft and lively in movement and song – seeking a gap in the traffic through which to cross. A flock of pigeons peppered the eaves opposite. There the space, and she skipped across the cobbled street into the shadow of one of Rome's many monuments to gods and victory.

Carts rattled pulled by man and beast, oxen a pale grey with powerful heads bowed low by the yoke. Everywhere the chatter of people, the metallic clang of chisel on marble in the mason's quarter, the hawker's cry, the slap of wet cloth from the fullers; a market day in the Forum. And twisting overhead branched burning incense from great bronze basins that smoked at temple entrances tended by priests swaddled in dark robes.

Here and there the crowd darted, Gabrielle among them, enjoying the solitude of anonymity amidst the throng. The tempo in Rome differed from her small island nestled in the Cyclades, where she was the height of attention and moral authority, her own little kingdom hidden in the machine of empire; but one such as herself quickly grows weary of fame and playing at regality. She was nothing but a playwright, and while she appreciated the luxuries fortune afforded her, she never relished the pomp necessary to maintain them.

A flurry of motion and a chorus of surprised yells. Gabrielle's eyes widened as she found herself at odds with a dark rider concealed behind a helm upon a dappled steed thundering straight toward her. Sparks flew up from steel-shod hooves striking stone, and the horse's bulging chest and thickly muscled neck lathered with sweat, snorting and champing at the bridle.

Gabrielle darted out of the way, falling to her knees, palms scraping along the ground. With a hiss of pain she struggled to right herself again, gazing incredulously after the rider, who did not hesitate or even notice the chaos brewed in its wake.

"Juppiter's stone!" she said aloud to no one in particular, brushing her hands against her cloak and wincing, "Who on earth was that?"

A shop owner, whose stall of fruit and dates had been upended, collected his fallen wares nearby and answered, "That was Caesar's empress and greatest general. I count myself lucky she didn't stop, and you should too."

"Well, I hope she makes a better general than she does an empress."

"That she does, dear lady," the shop owner muttered darkly, "That she does."

Still shaken, Gabrielle paused in her stroll to help the shop owner reposition his wares, and for her pains he gave her a small satchel of honey-smeared figs despite her attempts to decline his generosity. So she found herself meandering the maze of stalls in the market, idly tearing the flesh of a ripe fig between her teeth, purple and green mottled skin peeled back to reveal the pink center filed neatly with silvery seeds that glittered in the sun like pearls. Indeed a string of pearls lay upon display at the next stall, and Gabrielle smiled to herself at the thought of buying the jewelry for Berenike; doubtless the old woman would fuss and fret and refuse to wear the ludicrous gift, but she bought it regardless – she had always liked pearls herself. Perhaps she could wear them at tonight's show of her latest play, for there everyone would expect her to look the part, unlike here where the merchant in question eyed her as though he doubted she could actually pay the asking price. She responded in kind by bartering as hard a line as a Thracian horse merchant, and walked away with a gait like elation and a bargain in her purse.

She had reached the temple to Mars Ultor, eight-columned and Carraran-white. She stood for a moment there and looked up at the burnished bronze figures ensconced atop the triangular pediment. An archway to the side caught her eye and she turned toward it, swinging the parcel of figs in one hand so that it bumped against her thigh in a rhythmic meter – _one _two-three, _one_ two-three, _one_ – a half-beaten pentameter. She hummed to herself; her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth and the backs of her teeth, mouthing words, mimicking syllables, ever the tireless poet, one of many little Quirites.

Not ten paces beyond the archway Gabrielle stopped and blinked at her surroundings. Gone the grand marmoreal Forum and instead streets narrow and caked with filth, beggars shuddering in their hovels. Something scampered by her foot. She jumped. Suddenly she felt very young. She was an onlooker to people with lines on their lives and faces, deep groves like old battle scars, and everything smelled of the tanner's industry – piss and tar and smoked leather. Here the citizens were glassy eyed fish, flesh peeling off in scales, gasping for salt and seawater.

A woman with two children huddled in the hems of her ragged _stola_ watched the playwright, hands on the heads of her children as though to shield them from outward harm. Gabrielle hesitated. She could give them the pearls. A treasure like that could feed them for months. She sighed. But someone would take them for thieves or the jewelry would be pried from their cold dead fingers. Gabriell knew slums like this too well - she'd spent enough time traveling to less than resplendent parts of the world in her youth. Giving them gold or riches would accomplish little.

Heart in her stomach burning with acid, she laid the bag of figs at the woman's feet and murmured a prayer to the Bona Dea. Fortune had been unkind towards them, but that did not mean she had to be too.

Putting on the pearls later that evening, having returned to the Palatine slightly sunburnt at dusk as Night's lavender fingers extended from the East, Gabrielle swallowed back the bitter bile of guilt. She knew it was foolish of her, knew there was nothing she along could accomplish, though in her youth she had tried – oh how she had tried. Her reflection in the polished bronze mirror gazed back at her, a woman contorted yet beautiful in her disfiguration. Of course there was absolutely nothing wrong with her appearance, but the sentiment remained. Outside her window an owl sounded its lament and the moon was a gibbous orange on the horizon.

"What is it?" Berenike asked, noticing her lady's solemn expression.

"Nothing," Gabriell said, "It's nothing. I just think I'll go without the pearls tonight. They're a bit ostentatious, don't you reckon?"

Berenike grunted her disapproval, but unclasped the pearls anyway, brushing flaxen curls from her lady's neck with gnarled oaken fingers, "You are in Rome now, _domina_. Ostentation is a lifestyle here."

"For Caesar and his ilk perhaps," Gabrielle replied, flicking a stray lock of hair from her brow, "but not for me."

Berenike arched a knowing eyebrow at her in the mirror, "Nervous, _domina_?"

"Of course not. I'm not the one who'll be performing tonight."

"Are you sure about that?"

Gabrielle opened her mouth, but could think of no fitting remark. Instead she huffed an irritated little breath through her nose and let Berenike fuss over her hair.

She refused to prance for Caesar and his infernal empress like some trained lion for Rome's arena. Words were all she had, so words she would use, and how needling she'd make them, how unreserved. So she liked to think, even knowing she would do no such thing. A small comfort these diminutive fantasies she played through her mind, when in reality she gave figs instead of pearls and ate crow instead of larks' tongues.

But who would have though that the dark rider from that afternoon galloping powerfully through the busy Forum would be the same woman in soft robes with softer eyes gazing down at her on stage from the theater balcony? The woman who looked envious of the roses in Gabrielle's arms. The woman who clapped hardest among the resounding applause at the play's end, riveted and riveting. The woman who, at the party afterwards, waded through a sea of patrons and aristocrats and wealthy socialites, weaving straight for her, step sure, stride a pace more accustomed to stalking than walking – a gait unfit for an empress of Rome.

An attendant hovered at the empress' side but was waved away with an irritated glance before Gabrielle found the air suddenly far too warm and crowded.

Gabrielle inclined her head respectfully, acting the part as expected, "Empress," she greeted.

"Please," came the reply in a voice too throaty for an empress' wont, a voice used to bellowing commands upon the battlefield the way storms are used to thunder, "call me Xena. There's no need for such formalities between us."

A somewhat tremulous smile and an overly-long silence stretched between them. Gabrielle took gulps of Farlernian wine in lieu of conversation, hoping to fill the gaps and simultaneously embolden her own speech.

"I loved your play," Xena said, taking a half-step closer, her step an echo of the distant sea, "It was very moving."

"Thank you," Gabrielle dared look up and meet Xena's intense unblinking gaze, "That's very kind of you."

Xena smiled, a small genuine smile, "Kindness has nothing to do with it. Your writing merits every praise I could possibly hope to give. Where do you find your inspiration?"

She fidgeted with the rings on her fingers, Gabrielle noticed, as though she were unused to sitting so till. She could imagine Xena always fiddling with something; a weapon probably; a knife or dagger.

But what should she say? That her inspiration came only from stories she'd read, not lives she'd lived? That not once had she ever actually been in love? That her pretty tales about timeless romance were false whispers she dreamt of at night, only to awake with a jerk, sheets sticking to her sweaty limbs, her old wet-nurse snoring on a cot in the corner – her only consistent company?

"I traveled," she lied, a half-truth, "All through Greece and Anatolia and even to Alexandria once."

Xena rolled a ruby studded bangle around her wrist as though adjusting a bracer, "Traveling! That's – well, I do a fair bit of that myself." _With the legions_, was left unspoken, "And do you still travel often?"

Gabrielle shook her head with a rueful grin, "Not anymore. This is the most I've traveled in years. These days I keep to my island in the Aegean."

"Where in the Aegean?" Xena pressed.

"Just South of Naxos."

Now that wasn't a lie. Funny that a woman who despised ocean travel should live surrounded by water on all sides. She often thought her life was a joke. Perhaps today more than most others.

Xena's soft eyes searched Gabrielle's features, "It must be lovely this time of year."

Her dark hair was piled up in curls upon her head. Gabrielle mused to herself that she thought she preferred it long and free-flowing in the wild wind like it had been earlier that afternoon. _You're_ lovely, she wanted to say, but instead nodded and filled her mouth with another heady draught of watered wine, "It is," she said, "It is lovely."

She should not be having such thoughts about Caesar's wife, the empress of Rome. She knew what happened to those that dallied with Caesar's wives; Xena was certainly not the first, though she could be the last.

Invoke a god's name and he appears. So too with Caesar, who with but a thought seemed to materialize from the thinning airs at his wife's side. His poise was perfect, the gracious host epitomized, but he had eyes like a lizard's, fixed and calculating, "Why, my dear, you must be regaling our guest with tales of your latest conquest to keep her so intrigued!"

"What conquest?" Gabrielle queried. There had been no triumphal procession, no parade of Rome's glory. At least not yet apparently.

Xena would no longer meet her gaze, frowning instead at Caesar's hand on her elbow.

"Oh, did she not tell you?" Caesar continued, "Just three fortnights ago she sacked the great capital of Indus, setting the legions upon it to pillage and burn and rape freely. Morale has never been higher among the men, and now the troublesome nation is finally at heel – well done, my love!" he smirked at Xena, whose mouth pulled a grimace in a half-hearted attempt at a smile.

Gabrielle stared at them both, aghast. "I-" she choked, "I hadn't yet heard of this glorious news." Bowing her head she said, "Long life to you, Caesar. Long life to Rome."

He watched the dip of her head like a snake watches the dart of a sparrow through thorny branches, chirping its foreign song, strange, dark, "Rome thanks you for your services. Alas, we must away." He looked to his empress and back to Gabrielle, "The night grows ripe; sleep beckons; the army expects us in the morning."

Xena said nothing though a shadow briefly darkened her brow, only to clear a moment later, "Goodnight," she nodded to Gabrielle, "It was a pleasure."

And the imperial couple swept away through the ranks of their guests; Rome's perfect pair for Rome's perfect thirst, hungry for war as the poor for bread.

* * *

"What do you think they're talking about?"

Alti's mocking words scalded. Even in memory he could not stifle the boiling furor. He had seen the way Xena looked at Gabrielle. That was a different lifetime. She had no right to look at her that way. Not here. Not now. Not the way he spied her watching the playwright across the balcony later that same night, dressed only in a towel, golden hair still damp and gently curling from a recent bath. And there Xena had stood, hands clenching the balustrade, gazing longingly at the space between them

Caesar was never a jealous man. One of his previous wives he knew had conducted affairs. He did not mind such things; so long as they were dealt with discretion.

The empress Fausta in this lifetime had been his second wife. He had a son in this life, a solitary heir born to his first wife. Crispus had been his name, and he had been everything a dutiful son ought to have been, except cunning. Guileless as a sardine, he had been discovered having an affair with none other than his esteemed step-mother.

"What would the people think, Crispus," Caesar had sighed, shaking his head.

"Please," Crispus had begged, clasping his father's knees, "I do not ask you spare my life, but that of Fausta and the unborn child."

"Don't grovel," Caesar had snapped, kicking his son aside and tossing a vial of poison onto his chest, "It's beneath your station."

And he had waited until Crispus' body stopped twitching – spittle foaming at his blue lips – to attend to Fausta's bath. The child could not be kept of course, but the empress might yet be saved. But she too died, boiled alive in a failed abortion attempt at Caesar's orders.

He could stand his only son sleeping with his second wife, but under no circumstances could he stand Xena looking at Gabrielle like that.

There was too much at stake, he told himself. Too much.

* * *

The Mediterranean was warm, yet Rome felt cool. The _Mare Nostrum_ they called it. _Our Sea_. Rome's little paddling ground. Caesar and his empress felled nations with glances and called the sea theirs – and rightly so. Piracy was nonexistent. Trade flowed. Rumor had it a Vestal could cross from one end of the empire to the other completely unattended and unmolested. Gabrielle believed it too. She'd passed through cities and towns and outposts of all shapes and sizes on her journey to Rome, and not once had she encountered brigands – only soldiers and volunteers outfitted for the Urban Cohort and Vigiles. Thieves were unhanded. Murderers were beheaded. Deserters were crucified. And the sea belonged to Rome.

Berenike had dropped a plate of quail eggs and fish in front of Gabrielle that morning, but the playwright had scrunched her nose and asked for simple bread and oil instead.

"You'll never put on weight eating nothing but bread and fruit!" Berenike had chastened, pushing the platter of spotty egg shells and fatty pink salmon onto Gabrielle's unraveled scrolls.

Scowling mightily, Gabrielle had swatted the old woman away, "What's the point of being rich and famous if I can't eat what I like?"

But Berenike had only to cluck her tongue and glare for her ward to buckle – grumbling all the while as she separated the little delicacies with her fingers and stuck them in her mouth. Her stylus had rested where she dropped it, wooden tip swelling with ink black as the empress' hair. She had been in the middle of composing a poem and her head still spun in a haze of dactyls, caesurae, elision. She tapped the rhythm with her toe, chin bobbing as she ate under Berenike's watchful eye until at least a third of the platter was cleared. She felt fourteen again and Berenike still looked the same carting her unfinished plate away, lips pursed, long angled nose held at a disapproving slant.

Another one of those dreams had visited her last night, and she had risen from bed when Dawn's robes were still a pale grey tinged with saffron, her head positively humming with ideas, hands itching for the quill. Dragging an oil lamp close, she had set to work until the doves started cooing over her balcony and the empress' naked shadow passed behind a curtain.

The words washed out in a rush as though a distant memory cascading to the fore – tales of penitent warriors and traveling bards, of gods and swords and walking staves bound with Amazonian feathers. It was far more action-packed than her usual faire, but a sense of nostalgia pervaded the work, causing it to resound like a curling war trumpet – leaden and irrevocable.

She had paused when Berenike brought food, but soon after had to stop altogether. The scrapes on her hands had opened, fresh, streaking blood across the page. With a resigned sigh, Gabrielle had patter the sticky blood from her palms with a spare cloth and decided to go for a walk around the palace.

Perhaps her island home was simply warmer, her own meager slice of paradise, a sliver of meat upon the bone. Peace reigned in Rome's central territories. War was so easy to forget for the generations following; it existed outside, far from sight, far from mind. The center reaped all the benefits and none of the ravages, and poets sang of gold and ages. Islands surrounded by our sea of empire.

The sound of water softly splashing; fountains bubbled at every corner, fleshy cupids and nymphs and debauched satyrs with bright expressions and coral paste for eyes. Some were ribald. Some contemplative. Gabrielle circled one and cocked her head to watch the lazy sweep of a koi's tail in the clear pool, white with a vivid red stripe down its spine.

Columns flanked every line like spindly soldiers, caryatids drench in luna white with rich purple crests. And beneath every arch a bust or painting of ancestors, great men of Rome, Capitoline Minerva, Juno and Jove. Slaves scurried by, boards of ownership swinging from their necks and thumping their chests. They walked with eyes diverted and Gabrielle barely noticed their passing; they'd grown so skilled at the art of moving unseen. They were accomplished in invisibility and she tried to remember what that was like, but failed.

Upon hearing the ringing clash of steel and shrieking cries, she happened upon a spacious courtyard. Six figures, five surrounding the central. Rome's greatest general stood surrounded by Praetorian guards, flourishing her sword with a practiced ease. The five elite guardsmen eyed her weapon from beneath their crested helms, wary, and Xena's nostrils flared as though she could smell their hesitation. Peering around a narrow pillar by the walkway, Gabrielle stopped to watch.

The six sprang into action. Xena laughed as the fought, exultant, and her long hair whipped free from its former coils like banners snapping above ranked infantry marching to the hollow bruit of the drum, the blare of the solemn horn. She attacked and dodged with exhilarating speed, a star untouched by vice or virtue, Sirius which heralded the heat of summer, or Lucifer which bore the dawn – something bright and scorching.

Watching Xena fight felt voyeuristic somehow. A flush rose to Gabrielle's cheeks and her stomach swam, throat suddenly dry. She tried to tear herself away from the spectacle but only drew closer. This was worse than peeking through bed-curtains, or strolling by brothels and hearing the animal noises of passionate lovemaking from within. At least in the latter she could quicken her step and clear her throat and ignore her body's response – but not so here and now.

The empress was no lioness, nor she-wolf, nor any other beast. To call her such would be a disservice to her skill. No, she was human and all the more terrifyingly beautiful for it; dangerous as only a human could be.

And what a woman she was. Glimpses of her revealed themselves between the moving bodies of the Praetorians; there a length of thigh between _pteryges_; there the slope of a wrist bound in bracers; there the nape of her neck running smooth to a pauldron-clad shoulder.

The guards yielded. Some staggered away, hands clutching a wounded arm or knee. All were panting from exertion. Even the empress, her teeth bared in a rictus grin, fierce as the sun at noon. She caught sight of Gabrielle at the edge of the courtyard, leaning upon a pillar, hand clenched around a fistful of her silk dress, mouth parted. The empress gestured and a slave approached with a golden platter laden with items. With a towel she mopped the sweat from her glistening brow and neck and swept her bangs from her brow. The softness had returned to her eyes by the time she tossed the towel back to the slave and turned to approach Gabrielle, but a remnant of the fight glinted there still, hard and flinty. Behind her the Praetorians groaned and gathered their battered limbs, already preoccupied.

No sooner had Xena arrived than her gazed flashed with ire. She snatched Gabrielle's wrist and turned it up, revealing a bloody hand-print upon the _peplos_ she had been gripping in a vice.

"Who did this?" she asked reverently, gently tracing two fingers along the injured palms.

"You did," Gabrielle answered.

What irony. She could have laughed at the horrified expression on Xena's face, but the way the empress wrenched her hands back was less than humorous.

"I- what? When?"

Folding her hands back over and tucking them away, Gabrielle explained, "Do you remember riding through the Forum yesterday? There was a woman you almost hit and a market stall you knocked over." She gestured to herself, "I was the woman."

Xena chewed on her lower lip, fiddling with the pommel of the sword strapped to her side, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was you."

"Why should it matter who it was?" Gabrielle shook her head, "Even had it not been me, it still would have been someone."

Xena's mouth twisted to one side and she darted a look in Gabrielle's direction, but did not respond. Her shoulders straightened and she held out an arm, "Come. Walk with me. Tell me how I can make it up to you."

She had a smile like rain, dripping with seasonal charm that struck Gabrielle in the face, sending her reeling for a cloak.

Taking Xena's proffered arm, she walked by the Empress' side. Through the tooled and gilded leather armor she could feel the warmth of Xena's body. A fire lived in her skin.

"You can start by telling me why there are slums in the so-called greatest city in the known world," Gabrielle said archly. She thanked Fortune that her wits remained even when her mind was enveloped in an unfamiliar fog. Being so near Xena did strange things to her; she wasn't sure she particularly enjoyed it – a throbbing pulsed at the base of her skull the moment they first touched.

The empress scowled and her sudden onslaught of charm evaporated, "Every big city has slums. That's just the way things work."

Their stroll was aimless. High overhead the palace an eagle gave a piercing shriek, wheeling to clutch the left shoulder of a statue of Caesar. Somewhere an augur must have been taking note.

"But it doesn't have to be," Gabrielle insisted, "Rome has power and money and boundless influence. _You_ have influence. You're the empress – with but a word you could ease their suffering."

"Rome has other interests. Believe me when I say, Gabrielle, that the people would be far worse without Caesar."

Gabrielle liked the way her name sounded on Xena's tongue far too much. Her head gave a nasty twinge; the eagle tightened its talons around the emperor's stone statue, digging deep marks into pale marble. The pressure built; waves roared against rocky cliffs.

"I'm not sure Caesar is the only problem, empress," she retorted pointedly.

Xena's expression hardened, a muscle ticking in her lower jaw, "What would you have me do? If I give resources to one part of the empire, another suffers!"

She was tired – so tired of playing the perfect role, and the pain in her skull had mounted to an unprecedented height. She rounded upon her host, maenadic fury raging in her green eyes, "I would have you do _something_! Don't let the less fortunate starve in your shadow because you can't be bothered to do anything!"

"How dare you! How dare you raise your voice to me! I am your empress!"

They bore down upon one another. The eagle beat its potent wings and the ocean bubbled.

"You are no empress of mine!" Gabrielle spat.

Spots swam in her vision. Feeling faint, she whirled about, breaths short and shallow, storming off in disgust. She heard the empress shout after her, but she did not stop until she was back in her rooms and her inexplicable passion had subsided and the clamor of the sea had simmered to a blood-dimmed tide.

* * *

Rarely came the time when Caesar did not mull. Always his mind at work. Looking down upon the bodies of the ambassadors from Chin – their feet twitching, their hands clawing, orifices bloody from Alti's perverse ministrations – Caesar thought.

He thought about the nobility and Brutus and how he had failed last time by beating them at their own game.

He thought about the economy, about the steady influx of slaves from Indus and Aethiopia.

He thought about murmurs of discontent from Jerusalem and Parthia, and where to send more soldiers to quell any stirring revolts.

He thought about building another temple in the Forum to Venus Genetrix. He thought about his plans to divert the Tiber to prevent flooding.

He thought about sending Cassius to Parthia in order to keep him away from Brutus and also keep him busy in an area of much needed development.

Alti was speaking to him but Caesar only barely heard her words, her voice a rough and distant burr.

Finally he turned and said, "Alti, I want you to plant evident on the playwright linking her to these most unfortunate murders." He gestured down to the bodies of the ambassadors, tsking, arms crossed, "Rome was eager to broach diplomatic relations with Lao Ma, but it seems another faction within the empire does not wish it so. The playwright was a follower of Eli once, was she not?"

Alti smirked, "Indeed. She traveled with him briefly in Anatolia a number of years ago."

"Excellent," Caesar mused, "His followers have been stirring up trouble lately. I can rid myself of a pesky playwright and also have a reason to stamp out those quibbling Elijans all in one blow."

His voice trailed off as he mused, fading slowly into a low mutter, as though talking to himself. He paced. His sandaled feet clacked lightly against the polished marble floors. Heel. Toe. Heel. Toe.

Clearing his throat, he glanced up to see Alti watching him with narrowed eyes. He waved her away, "See that it is done."


	2. Chapter 2

**And here we have the second and final part. **

**Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: X:WP is not mine.**

* * *

The Ides of March were tomorrow. The Nones had passed, and Caesar could not stop his feet from pacing. He felt nervous. Emperors should not feel nervous. It was unseemly. Yet still he paced his study, drilling a line into the stone floor.

Rationally he knew that the Ides were just a date. A calculation for the _fasti. _But the soul knew. The soul remembered. He rubbed at his chest. His entire torso ached – twenty-three gashing aches.

"I heard a tale in the Forum," Alti began, standing behind him, watching him pace, "A haruspex saw something very interesting three days ago."

"I've half a mind to ban haruspicy," Caesar growled, "Damn fools don't know when to keep their mouths shut."

He should rip out their entrails, carve a hooked knife down their bellies and show them just how soon the future could be divined. He should grip their slippery offal in his fist, their lungs still breathing in their cages like the weak flutter of birds' wings.

"He saw an eagle land on the left shoulder of your statue on the Capitoline," Alti said, "And then two sparrows flew up from the roof of the temple of Juppiter Optimus Maximus, and pecked the eagle to death."

Caesar glowered at Alti, but she only grinned at him.

"The eagle was almost pure white, he said," Alti continued, drawing closer, a slow slinking prowl, "but that when it died it was red and covered in twenty-three wounds. That's a very precise number, wouldn't you agree?" she leaned in close and hissed low in Caesar's ear, "_Twenty-three._ Whatever could it mean?"

"Aren't you supposed to be planting evidence on the playwrite?" his face gave away nothing but his hands were clenched into fists.

Alti smiled, "Already done."

"Then I'll send men over right away," he turned to leave, the long train of his toga barely brushing his left footstep.

"Aren't you going to deal with your divination problem?" Alti called after him.

He paused only long enough to growl under his breath, "I _am_ dealing with it."

* * *

The Minister of Imperial Expenditure would be coming to see her play, so Berenike had said. And the Governor of Bithynia-Pontus. And the Regent of the Parthian Boy-King. Did it matter? Did it matter in the least that some official from some rich land appointed by Caesar would attend the last show of her play in Rome? Caesar would still be there, and worse still Caesar's empress.

Gabrielle avoided any confrontation with Rome's soldier-empress. She feigned sickness. She ducked behind pillars. She spilled wine, purposefully ruined her favorite dress – a pale green _stola_ criss-crossed with satiny pink ribbons. But the most famous playwrite in the empire, the jewel of Athens, could hardly skip her own play three nights in a row. Though she tried. She would rather endure Berenike's clucking for an evening than suffer for a few moments the empress' company in the same vicinity.

Did it matter? She would attend. She knew she would attend. Tonight was it. The last night. Tomorrow the Ides and on the Ides she left for home. Home which was a villa nestled among the vineyard hills by the shore. The wine produced there was middling at best, but it was sweet and light and just how Gabrielle liked it. But an appreciated vintage did not a home make. She would attend this last play. She would simper and smile and bite her cheek when she wished to lash out at an insipid diplomat and his harlot, and she would return to the home which was not a home, which would never be a home, but it was all she had. Her kingdom by the sea, the sea which belonged to Rome.

"Alright!" Gabrielle threw her hands in the air after Berenike listed for the third time the candidates who would be at her play and the subsequent after-party, "I'll go!" she conceded.

At first Berenike looked taken aback, but then smugness altered the shift of her bony shoulders, "Very good, _domina._ Shall I fetch your dress from the washing? Or would you prefer to wear something else?"

Gabrielle waved her away, tired, "The green one, if you please."  
Berenike inclined her head and bustled out, humming to herself, pleased.

"Old bat," Gabrielle muttered to herself not unkindly.

She sat at her writing table in her quarters at the imperial palace, slouched gracelessly in the low-backed curule chair inlaid with polished ivory and blue mother-of-pearl. Scrolls and loose sheafs of paper littered the desk. A bronze and copper inkwell sat at one corner. A simple cotton _peplos _draped from collar to ankle. She chewed on the end of her favorite stylus, indented along its back length with little tooth-marks. Sunlight turned the fluttering curtains a rich cream. It was mid-morning, and the days were growing warmer.

Setting the stylus down, she rubbed at her temples, elbows resting at the arms of the chair, alternatively pinching the bridge of her nose hard. That bizarre headache was creeping its way back. The tips of her fingers transferred faint prints beside her eat, stained as they were with blotches of fresh ink. She hadn't been able to write a single coherent sentence that morning after awaking from a recurring nightmare about flames and temples and power-hungry gods.

Just a day, she told herself. Just a day. Soon Rome would be nothing but an unfortunate memory that plagued her when –

— the door burst open. A gust of sudden wind tore through the space. And the door was slammed shut once more. There stood Rome's empress with eyes that burned and an expression dark as Lake Avernus.

"You've been avoiding me," Xena stated through grit teeth, hands clenched at her sides, her red dress a velveteen drop beyond her calves.

"I see Caesar chose you more for your fighting skills than your acumen," Gabrielle retorted dryly.

Xena's lip threatened to curl into a snarl, "We need to talk," she growled, stepping forward.

Gabrielle flew to her feet and stood her ground, "About what?" she hissed.

"I don't know! Something! This!" she gestured between them, "_Us!_"

"I met you four days ago!" Gabrielle retorted, "There is no us! There will never be an us!"

"But perhaps there was an us. Once."

"What are you talking about?" Gabrielle's headache had returned to full force. From the moment Xena entered the air was filled with the shrill cry of gulls and the spray of salt water and the rising swell of the tide.

"I don't know!" Xena answered, frustration driving her forward, feet stamping the ground in fruitless anger, "Something is wrong! I can feel it! But when I'm with you it's different. There's a - a rightness. And around you it's like," she licked her lips and made grasping gestures in the air, "like I can almost taste it."

"The rightness?" Gabrielle asked.

"Yes," Xena breathed, "the rightness," They were so close now – too close, "Tell me you feel differently."

"I feel," Gabrielle swallowed, eyes flickering down, "_wounded_." She rasped, "Don't you?"

And she did too. As though their lives had been stripped and shorn and wrapped in a shroud for the pyre.

"Yes. But when I'm with you I bleed less."

Gabrielle took a step back. Her hands brushed against the table, twisting together behind her back, wringing them to keep from reaching out and touching. That thought was far too tempting. A thrill skittered down her spine, a knife's edge along a rib. Was this terror? What was it that filled her with this foreign excitement? Who else but Xena – for there she was.

"I can't - We can't -" Gabrielle looked away, "I'm a playwrite, a nobody. And you're Rome's empress."

But Xena looked broken, "I'm no good at being empress. I'm no good."

In the end all Xena had to do was give her a look, _that _look – Gabrielle didn't even know she was susceptible to such a look until that very moment – and she was utterly undone.

She must have done something, must have shown some outward display, for suddenly she and Xena were breathing the same air and every heaving gasp sounded of the roar of the ocean.

She could not say who initiated contact. Perhaps it was Xena, but Xena was standing completely still. And it was then Gabrielle realized she herself had lurched forward, rising up on her toes, fingers pushing against the desk behind her, until their mouths met, soft and sweet.

But Xena seemed to remember movement, and Gabrielle found herself thrust backwards. She bumped the table. The copper and brass inkwell toppled over like a dictator's statue pulled by ropes. Xena's thigh was pressed between her legs and the breath stuttered in her throat – fire sputtering upon a wick water-doused. Gabrielle grasped at the red velvet robes and the soft form beneath; generals should not feel so yielding, so pleasingly warm.

Ink spilled across the table. The empress of Rome was kissing her like the sea kisses the shore, and ink dripped onto her pale dress – hitched up around her knees.

There lingered such a mystery about the whole thing. How strange. How surreal. Some Cassandra singing with god-stricken phrase her bawdy hymns, garlanded with a hymenal crown; a future foretold and a future forsworn. After years of lying lost upon her island, not once in her life had Gabrielle felt at home until now, this defining moment – Xena's mouth upon hers and Xena's hands tangled in her hair and Xena's hips chafing against her groin. Here something lost. Here something gained. But above all here the woman she would give the whole world for a single day, and in that day the whole world.

A noise, a sound like a startled gasp, a double-hinged and muffled cry. Did she make that noise? What did it matter. What did it matter when the world faded in the wake of hands wandering across the smooth plains of a back, the downward sweep of a thigh, curving at the back of a knee and pulling Xena as close as she could manage and Xena reciprocating in kind. As though it were the most natural thing. And perhaps it was.

There, a gap. A hint of something glimpsed across a crowded cobbled street. Another life from another time stood in the inky shadow of Rome's monuments, and wine-dark tides rained from braziers into the sky.

Thunder as storms are wont to thunder, the boom and the peal. Or was that something else? A knocking?

"Open this door! In the name of your emperor, open this door!"

Gabrielle drew back with a sharp gasp. Xena looked dazed, lips parted, and confusion battled across her features when Gabrielle scrambled upright, pushing her back, and hastily righted their clothing. Her mouth still hung agape when four Praetorians burst into the room, hands on the hilts of their swords, jaws set beneath crested helms.

It took only an instant for the empress to return, nostrils flaring, head tilted back imperiously, "What is the meaning of this?"

They bowed to their empress, "Forgive us, empress," one of them explained, "Caesar's orders. We must examine the room."

"What for?" Gabrielle asked.

"Two ambassadors from Chin were discovered dead. The Praetorian Guard has been informed and settled with the task of uncovering the culprit."

Xena took a menacing step forward, but Gabrielle grabbed her arm, "It's fine," she murmured, "I have nothing to hide. Better we just let them do their job."

The Praetorians circled, vultures scouting for a cadaverous meal. Xena stewed in the center of the room, Gabrielle at her side, and the playwrite's fingers lingered at her wrist before withdrawing. That warranted a few suspicious glances from the Praetorians. Or perhaps Gabrielle was just paranoid. Was her hair an absolute mess? If she looked half as flustered as she felt, the Praetorians would surely arrest her on the spot – not for murder, but for lusting after Caesar's empress. For acting upon those baser urges. And worst of all for finding singular happiness in a life where happiness had been continually denied her.

The Praetorians rummaged through her clothes, the linens of her bed. They parted the sea of scrolls on her desk; one was even thoughtful enough to avoid placing any parchment on the spilled ink that slowly dripped onto the floor.

"You know the tongue of the Israelites?" one asked, holding up a sheaf of paper.

Gabrielle frowned in confusion, "What? No. I only know Greek and Latin and some Etruscan."

He looked down at the page, "And I suppose the name 'Lao Ma' means nothing to you?"

"What are you getting at?" Xena demanded, eyes narrow slits.

The pounding. Thunder in the distance – storms blackening the choppy sea.

The Praetorians ignored her, their attention fixed now on Gabrielle. Two moved to flank her, pushing Xena aside, their hands grabbing her upper arms, immobile. Gabrielle thought she was going to be sick.

"You are under arrest for murder and conspiracy to commit treason," the Praetorian rolled up the evidence and jerked his head at his comrades, "Take her to the dungeons."

* * *

"So you're the reason why Caesar has his toga in a knot," Alti circled. She eyed Gabrielle from head to toe, and the playwrite sat hunched upon a bench in the middle of the cell dressed in prison rags, her back hunched – a wounded sparrow beneath a snake's slippery coiled backs, "I don't see why he's so worried. You're nothing impressive."

She reached out to take Gabrielle's chin between her fingers, but Gabrielle jerked back with a fierce glare.

Alti threw her head back and cackled, "Oh, but you do have _spirit!"_ With a lunge, serpent-quick, Alti had a hand around Gabrielle's throat, "Now let's take that spirit out to play, shall we?"

Pain.

It was not so much like being dipped as it was being drowned.

Her lungs begged for air only to be filled with water. Gabrielle could but thrash and Alti stood over her, pouring the ocean into her mouth. She gagged and choked, and Alti's laugh turned abrasive as volcanic rock. She was drowning and each drop was a moment of pain from another life. A wasp sting from childhood. A twisted ankle from a poorly judged jump. A splitting fire in her pelvis from giving birth to a monster. Nails hammered through her hands.

With them a merciless barrage of memories. Flashing images. Strings of them laid out like pearls or seeds, shiny and pale, dredged up from the ocean floor. Alti speared each one with a needle and thread, wrapped them around her neck – a priceless noose – and strangled her as easily as a mother strangles a babe in the cradle, dashes its brains upon rocks from city walls.

Gabrielle slumped forward from Alti's grasp, falling to the floor in a heap of limbs. Her muscles refused to calm their spasms, and with every wet gasping breath she inhaled dust from the filthy cell floor. Meanwhile above her Alti's head tipped back and she breathed in deeply, eyes clenched, a sharp smile cutting her face in twain.

"Even as it is written, she had her dwelling in the great sea and was a fish therein."

That line. Gabrielle remembered that line. She was peace. She would stagnate and decay. Long green dresses and wickedly curved scythes hugging the hips. Harvests must be reaped and fields must be sown with new seed; she was peace and killing was the ultimate kindness.

"So," Alti drawled, circling Gabrielle's trembling prostrate form and tilting Gabrielle's head up with the toe of her foot to see the agony smolder there, "in another life Xena is a warrior and the playwrite is her little poet pet." She let Gabrielle's cheek fall back to the ground, "How adorable."

"Don't touch her!"

Alti turned, "Ah! Empress! How good of you to join us! I was just finishing with your little friend here."

Xena yanked keys from the hands of the nearby guard, who started and opened his mouth to protest, only to snap it quickly shut at the look in Xena's face – and the cell door soon swung inward with a clang. The Empress tossed the keys back to the guard and dismissed him with a jerk of her head.

"Get away from her," Xena snarled at Alti, moving forward with menace in her step.

"Why?" Alti crossed her arms and watched Xena, "What's she to you?"

"Nothing."

Alti paced lazily, strides taking her around the bench in the middle of the cell, where she planted her hands and leaned forward, "Are you sure? Don't you want to know your history together?" she taunted, "I could show you."

Jaw clenched, the empress' gaze darted from Alti to Gabrielle and back again. She cocked her head warily, "And why would I do that?"

"Because you want to know. So badly," Alti shot back with a smirk, "Why this life feels so fruitless, so vast and empty. Why seeing her for the first time filled that void. Why Caesar always leaves you feeling cold and faintly _besmirched_."

From the floor Gabrielle stirred, groaning. Xena's eyes flashed with Junonic ire, "If you've hurt her, there's no power that can save you. I will implore every god in my quest to destroy you; and if I am unable to sway the hearts in heaven, I will move those in Hell itself."

Alti laughed, "Small talk from a woman who's been there so many times."

"What are you talking about?"

Alti crooked a finger, "Come here and find out."

Eyes wary, Xena drew closer, but before Alti could touch her she warned, "Harm me and my husband will crucify you."

"The irony of that statement -" Alti chuckled, a deep sound in her chest, "Well, you'll find out soon enough."

And she sprang forward, hands wrapping around Xena's throat. Teeth bared in a wild smile, she looked down at Xena helpless and jerking in her grasp

Gabrielle could hear the agonized whimpers, Xena's heels scraping passively against the floor. Wrists weighted in manacles, Gabrielle clambered upright, swaying unevenly against the side of the bench. The ground rocked like the hull of a ship, and Alti's back was to her.

Something in Gabrielle's stomach lurched; she had a thought, an image grotesque and horrifically anathema. A dagger dripped blood upon a temple floor, the sound a soft rush – the fall, the liquid splash. She was not a killer in this life. In this life she lived a stone's throw from the sea and wrote romance to flocks of gulls over the waves. But in another life she was armed with a staff and a scythe and she was peace.

With a rasping cry she threw herself forward atop the bench and wound her chains around Alti's neck, whipping the priestess' head back with a savage wrench. Alti reached behind her to grab at Gabrielle's hair and yank, and in doing so dropped Xena, who slid to her knees. Clumps of blonde hair Alti ripped; Gabrielle grit her teeth and tightened the chains, digging into the soft flesh of Alti's neck, the tendons standing taught and yellow.

Alti screamed. The shriek bubbled and frothed pink at the edges of her mouth. Her body went rigid then completely slack. She flopped forward and revealed the hilt of a throwing dagger jutting just above her collarbone, and Xena still on her knees – one arm outstretched. Twin lines of wine-dark blood dribble from Xena's nose, curving down her chin. Her chest heaved, eyes glazed as though from the kiln, shiny and sharp as shards of pottery.

Pushing Alti's corpse aside, Gabrielle scrambled forward to catch Xena before her body collapsed. She trembled in Gabrielle's arms and her skin burned fever-hot. Her wide gaze flickered at the sound of Gabrielle calling her name and gently wiping the blood from her face.

"Gabrielle?"

"Yes, yes – I'm here," her voice was a low panicked deluge of affirmations. She could not keep her hands from smoothing back that wealth of dark hair, and she leaned forward to plant small quick kisses to Xena's temple, tracing the bluff of a cheek with the bridge of her nose.

"You need to leave," Xena coughed, "Before Caesar and his men arrive. The guard – Joxer – he'll take you far from Rome -"

"No," Gabrielle interrupted, vehement, "No, Xena – I won't leave you -"

The shriek of eagles, the distant thrum of wind beneath wings in their august approach.

Xena grabbed one of Gabrielle's hands, "You promise me," she glared, breathing harshly through her nose, "You promise me you'll run far from Rome and never turn back. You promise me that you'll live a long life in this world."

Shaking her head Gabrielle choked back scalding tears, "I can't. Not without you."

Xena laced their fingers; her smile was shaky yet bright, "If I can give you something now - some time, some sliver of hope for happiness in this life – then I will."

"That's not for you to decide! I can fix this!"

"Praetorian!" Xena yelled, and the guard came running, "Joxer, do as I ordered; take her away. Wherever she wants to go."

Joxer saluted. As he fumbled for the keys at his baldric, Xena pulled Gabrielle down and laid a kiss to Gabrielle's brow, just a soft press of her mouth, "I'll love you forever," she breathed.

Joxer's hands were surprisingly gentle for an elite soldier. He grasped Gabrielle by the shoulder and pried her away, all the while murmuring, "Come along. Come along."

At first she struggled, but at the pleading look in Xena's eyes she tore herself away from the empress and stormed from the cell. Joxer followed close behind, skipping ahead to her side to unlock the manacles, which fell to the floor with a clang. The shore ran from Gabrielle's eyes and embers burned in her footsteps. She was peace, and the ocean raged in Dionysiac furor.

"Where would you like me to take you?" Joxer asked, respectfully draping his cloak around Gabrielle's prison rags.

"Cumae," she announced without hesitation. She tugged the cloak over her head in a makeshift hood, "We go to Cumae."

* * *

When Caesar arrived at the cell moments later, flanked by four Praetorians, Xena was waiting for him. She had managed to heave herself upon the bench. Her robes were scuffed with dirt. Alti lay at her feet in a pool of blood; her body grew cold and rigid.

Xena looked up and met his gaze, hard and unflinching, and hissed, "My lord is home at last."

His jaw tightened. He cocked his head, "Where is the playwrite?"

"I freed her. Right after I killed Alti," came the immediate response.

Caesar's shoulders stiffened, but that was the only indication of surprise or anger that he gave – still as unreadable as a weathered mountain range, "And why have you done this, pray tell?"

She bared her teeth and gripped the edge of the bench with bloodless knuckles, "I remember. I remember everything. A gift from your high priestess."

"So the first thing you do is force my hand instead of coming to me to make a deal," he shook his head and strode forward until he stood in the open doorway of the jail cell, "You disappoint me, Xena. Though I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything less; you made for a terrible empress."

"Empresses reflect their emperors," she shot back and felt a small spark of victory at his darkening expression, "Why couldn't you have just left her alone?"

"You _looked_ at her," Caesar hissed.

"I look at many people."

"Not the way you look at her."

Xena's eyebrows rose, "I never took you for a jealous man, Caesar. In any life."

Rage lived in his eyes, in the muscles bunched at his jaw, "We could have had everything. And we still can," his face lit up with a fervor, blistering as the Palmyran sands, "The world is within our grasp!"

Her lip curled in a sneer of disgust, "I don't want the world. I want her. I've only ever wanted her."

"Guards!" he snapped, whirling in an abrupt about face on his heel, "Take the priestess' body and burn it. Keep watch on the empress here. If she tries to do anything, break her fingers. I want a cross ready for her by dawn."

* * *

Clouds swelled, pregnant with rain. The pounding of mallets and the pounding of hooves. Rome was the greatest empire the world had ever seen. The sky opened up and the sea washed down.

Caesar stood before the temple of Mars Ultor. Above him had been erected a canvas pavilion to shield him from the torrential downpour, and his head bore a gold laurel crown. Citizens gathered, giving a wide berth to the wooden cross laid in the center of the Forum. Their murmurs were drowned by the incessant drumming of rain, the rumble of distant thunder.

Two Praetorians dragged the empress across the Forum in rags. Her fingers were swollen and blotched with reds and purples. Her long black hair had been short short and ragged. The crowd grew silent, hushed. Caesar watched with a smile of grim satisfaction as Xena became one of Rome's conquered.

The air sizzled with lightning when Xena screamed, nails driven into palms. The crowd watched, as riveted as an audience to a play, as limbs to wooden crosses.

"Caesar," a slave panted, sides heaving; sweat mingled with rain upon his skin and tunic. He had just run a long distance, "The playwrite and the traitor Praetorian were seen going towards Lake Avernus."

Caesar's head whipped around. He missed the spectacle of the Praetorians lifting Xena into the air, though her shrieks pierced the air, resounding around the Forum's many temples and monuments and marble markets.

"Avernus? You're sure?" Caesar asked sharply.

The slave nodded in affirmation. Caesar pushed him aside and snapped at one of his guards, "A horse! Get me a horse!"

* * *

Avernus stank like the pits of Tartarus. Methane rose in steamy strips from its surface and coiled in the atmosphere above. The day was still young when Gabrielle and Joxer arrived at the entrance to the underworld, dismounting from their lathered horses. Joxer cocked his head at the sun hidden behind a thick blanket of cloud, "Rain's coming. Soon, too."

But Gabrielle paid him no heed; she walked towards the water's edge and threw aside the cloak Joxer had given her. She stood upon the shore of Lake Avernus wearing nothing but her prison garb, her wrists still raw from the manacles, "Go back to Rome," she said over her shoulder, "Go be with your family."

He snorted, "Caesar's going to have me crucified when he finds me."

Gabrielle waded into the tide, "He won't have time to find you." She plunged into the lake, ignoring Joxer's worried shouts, and dove down, each stroke of her arms carrying her deeper into the black.

Her lungs burned. Her chest screeched for air. The darkness thickened into a viscous sludge. she swam until her whole body was seized with an ache, and the world inverted. Up became down. Down – Up. All sense of space and time expanded from a tunnel into a broad plain. Until she hit the bottom and broke the surface.

Acheron was a reflection of the world above. Where the sun should have shone in the sky there glared an inky orb dripping its dark fire onto the world below. Black miasmic clouds gathered, eerily quiet, and they rained the absence of air.

Crawling up the rocky beach – fine granules of glass caught between the shards – Gabrielle staggered to her feet. Her palms were once again scraped bloody and raw, and the skin of her knees was in tatters. With shambling step she forged ahead, and the dead stared at her from the shore with ghostly faces and milky eyes. Some raised their heads and sniffed the air as she passed among their ranks, and they crowded the droplets of blood scattered in her wake; where they pressed their cold lips and tongues to the fresh hot life, color seeped back into their limbs – a swift flush that passed through them like water through sieves.

They followed her, clusters of the dead, spreading behind her footsteps in a wraith-like train. The edges of them smoked, forms muddled in the deep. Gabrielle strode, and each pace bloomed with spidery-silk shades, lapping at her fingertips, knees, wrists and scraped elbows. She hardly felt them.

Swooping down, she grabbed a jagged shard of glass from the beach's terminal fringe, then turned to the roiling horde of spirits, "Which way to the Loom of Fate?"

They blinked, slow and guileless, owlish even in their hollowness. Gabrielle raised the shard of glass to her palm and slashed.

The dead leapt forward, a thronging splash, a spray of the saltless sea upon her wound, and she held it out to their hungry gaping mouths, so like pale fish streaked with red along their spines. They whispered the Loom's whereabouts for her offering, their tones soft and hoarse, the brush of wind over grassy hills, and she flung the bloodied glass into their midst. As they dove upon it, she turned and raced towards her destination, sandaled feet hidden by a low-hanging mist.

An archway draped with a silvery net crowned the passageway stretching before her. The absence of air pattered down from too-quiet clouds, and the net trembled, its nodes winking like stars through a poisonous vapor.

Holding her breath, Gabrielle drove through the arch. The net caught on her skin, silvery thorns digging deep and painful, latching onto something within her chest and giving a fierce yank. It felt like an eternity, that one step through the veil. Dis Pater coiled his net, his robes of doom for the mortal haul, and slowly pulled her soul from her mouth, a long winding slither, colubrine-thin. She held her breath, tethered the spirit to her corporeal mast, and fell through the archway into Fortune's trial quarters.

The Parcae stood in chains around a pillar, triple-faced, their eyes liquid dark as the night sky. Their skin stretched too tight across their faces and hands, pulling taut their lips and the flesh around their wrists, revealing knobs of radial bone and swollen teeth.

"Security's a bit lax these days, I see," Gabrielle drawled. They did not seem amused by her sarcasm; they glowered stonily.

The Loom stood at the far end of the room, entrenched in loose ends and frayed yarn like a prisoner drowning in its own feces. It wove with wild abandon, no one to tend it and temper its constant stream of fortune. Even a well lubricated machine soon descends into decay and disarray with absent attendees. One line – just one – fell out of place and the rest followed suit until the machine belched great vomiting spews, acid-bright, soiling the very threads it wove. But perhaps one line was all it took.

The sight made a wave of nausea rise in Gabrielle's throat. She swallowed thickly and approached.

"What are you doing?" Decima asked, her tone sharp. The Parcae rattled their chains, strained against them.

Gabrielle's hand hovered over the tangled mess, "I'm going to fix it."

"You can't!" Nona cried, struggling against the chains, "There's too much chaos!"

"I can," Gabrielle breathed. Her hands trembled as she gathered strands of gold and silver into her lap. She was born to write, to weave, to create, to mend what was thought broken, "I can do this."

One string – just one – burned brightest amidst the confused web. A sickly yellow-green, it pulsed. The other spun around it, wrapping it in a cocoon. She reached out and plucked it; like a grape it slid from the stem, the tug, the precarious grip, the jerk free, a small tiny bead, pearl-like, left behind.

"Well, well…" a man's voice said behind her; Caesar stood at the entrance. His toga had long since been cast aside, and his hair clung to his head, slick from rain. His cheeks and arms glistened with rivulets and he bore resemblance to Atlas, weary yet powerful, the weight of his spirit heavy upon his broad shoulders, "You're even more meddling than I thought possible."

Gabrielle dug the nail of her thumb into the threat in her hands, and Caesar keeled over as though he'd been kicked in the gut by a horse. He clutched his side, Prometheus squeezing the small shaving of his liver before the eagle returned, "You little bitch."

Gabrielle only cocked her head at the snarled invective, an almost curious expression on her face, pitying, "Your time is done, Caesar."

Wheezing, he grit his teeth; veins appeared at his forearms, neck and temples, "You won't kill me," he sneered, "It's against all you stand for."

Gabrielle glared coldly down at his supine form and crossed to the tethered Parcae, drawing the scissors from Morta's molding robes, "Killing you would be a kindness. But I don't need to kill you. You're already dead." And she cut his thread in two.

The scream that tore from him was more animal than man, the high screech of a stallion in the night, hooves drumming the flinty mountain flank. Twenty-three wicked gashes blossomed across his chest and back, staining his tunic rich, dark and clotted with gore, gushing from his nose and mouth and spattering his chin. His body seized on the ground; the gold laurel crown clattered from his brow and rolled into the shadows.

Back at the loom Gabrielle inserted the snipped thread through a cage and pushed it along the fine wire frame. Her fingers marred the thread with bloody smears, but the Loom gripped its clean edge tight and on its own began to weave.

Awed, she stepped back. Caesar's proper ending funneled the Loom's mire. She watched as the Loom sucked its own sewage back into its gaping maw, retreating with orderly strokes into the delta. The threads bounded, cataract-swift, and crept in turn. The Loom absorbed its chaotic jumble of strings and wires in a rapid flux.

The Parcae murmured in Gabrielle's ear - they swore the Loom would fail without attendance; they cursed and railed at their bonds and bid her free them. But she sat upon the ground and pulled her knees to her chest and watched the Loom right itself; she ignored the Parcae sucking on their bacterial teeth and spitting past their taut lips, gnarled hands sawing their chains back and forth. beside her Caesar's corpse seeped blood onto the floor, wide eyes glassy and glittering in the torchlight, dull as stones, shards of dark granite washed upon the stormy shoreline.

The Ides had come, but would not pass.

* * *

The day was still young when Gabrielle arrived at the forest's edge just north of Thessalonika. A mist clung to the trees, but she walked as though not deterred at all, arms resting comfortably at her side, the skin of her hands and knees shiny and raw as though from freshly healed wounds, and her eyes scanned the rolling green valley below her dotted with sheep. Her hair was short again, cropped to the base of her neck where it grazed and tickled. Behind her the crunch of boots over leaves and twigs, and the trod of heavy hooves. Xena came up beside her, the ends of her long hair fluttering past her shoulders. Together they watched the mist curl beneath the sun – the sea was nowhere in sight.

"Want one?"

Gabrielle looked over to see Xena holding out a fig to her. Smiling gently, she took it and inspected its mottled skin before taking a bite. The dry flesh parted beneath her teeth, revealing a burst of pink seeds.

What a day, she thought, what a fine spring day.

Argo nudged Xena's elbow with a downy nose, and Xena gave the horse a fig as well. She met Gabrielle's gaze over Argo's pricked ears, and her eyes were soft as rain.

Reaching under Argo's chin, she sought Gabrielle's hand. Their fingers clasped together, sticky and sweet from figs, and Gabrielle felt all the breath rush from her lungs, a long and sweeping exhalation.

"You were a terrible empress," she said with a grin.

"And you were a half-decent playwrite."

"Did you really like my play?"

Xena shrugged and stroked the back of Gabrielle's hand with her thumb, "Didn't have enough swordplay for my tastes."

"Nothing has enough swordplay for your tastes."

Argo snorted between them and lipped at their wrists until their hands parted. Xena pushed her away playfully, "Old nag." She muttered before landing a kiss between Argo's eyes, then circling around to hoist herself gracefully into the saddle.

"Oh, I see," Gabrielle planted her hands on her hips, "The horse gets a kiss, but nothing for the woman who saved the world?"

Xena held out her hand and pulled Gabrielle into place behind her; wrapping Gabrielle's arms around her waist and grinning over her shoulder, she said archly, "I'll pay you back when we make camp."

Gabrielle chuckled and nuzzled the back of Xena's neck as Argo kicked into motion, "I'm looking forward to it."

It was sixteen days until the Kalends of April, and the Ides of March was well behind them, strangled by the mist.

Warriors make for terrible soldiers, great generals and truly appalling empresses. They know naught of surrender nor defeat. Triumph is a warrior's wont, the war-trumpet a warrior's song. Loyal to a fault. Headstrong. Passionate. But it was all these qualities that made Xena the very best of friends.


End file.
